To Mrs. Sitwell
The review of Robert Browning’s Inn Album here mentioned appears in Vanity Fair, Dec. 11, 1875. The matter of the poem is praised; the “slating” is only for the form and metres.
[Edinburgh, December 1875.]
Well, I am hardy! Here I am in the midst of this great snowstorm, sleeping with my window open and smoking in my cold tub in the morning so as it would do your heart good to see. Moreover I am in pretty good form otherwise. Fontainebleau lags; it has turned out more difficult than I expected in some places, but there is a deal of it ready, and (I think) straight.
I was at a concert on Saturday and heard Hallé and Norman Neruda play that Sonata of Beethoven’s you remember, and I felt very funny. But I went and took a long spanking walk in the dark and got quite an appetite for dinner. I did; that’s not bragging.
As you say, a concert wants to be gone to with someone, and I know who. I have done rather an amusing paragraph or two for Vanity Fair on the Inn Album. I have slated R. B. pretty handsomely. I am in a desperate hurry; so good-bye.—Ever your faithful friend,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Mrs. de Mattos
The state of health and spirits mentioned in the last soon gave way to one of the fits of depression, frequent with him in Edinburgh winters. In the following letter he unbosoms himself to a favourite cousin (sister to R. A. M. Stevenson).
Edinburgh, January 1876.